Happy Easter – A Dziennik Polski Cache From Steven Kalemkiewicz

fellow genealogist, Steve Kalemkiewicz was doing some research using the Dziennik Polski – Detroit, Historical Newspapers. He discovered, Stanczyk’s paean to that newspaper (at the preceding link) and graciously provided this jester with a slew of new data/funeral cards. He had collected a funeral card of his ancestor (Marta Dłubisz) and he thought to gather others as well from his research efforts and pass them along to my ever growing database of Detroit Polonia, as chronicled in the former daily newspaper, Dziennik Polski (Detroit). The new funeral cards (all from 1963) can be found with some already existing samples at the follow web address:

http://goo.gl/FYHPt

Here are the names of the new files (Funeral Cards):

Wrobel, JozefSr.jpg

Szwed, Teofila.jpg

Zysk, Stella.jpg

Zajaczkowski, JanK.jpg

Sitek, Katarzyna.jpg

Glowczewski, AntoniP.jpg

Kopycki, Franciszek.jpg

Switaj, Aleksander.jpg

Banka, Klara.jpg

Kosinska, CeciliaR.jpg

Rataj, EugeniuszV.jpg

Pawczuk, Kazimierz.jpg

Zamlynska, Wiktoria.jpg

Dlubisz, Marta.jpg

1940 Census Preparations – Pays 1st Dividend

Stanczyk,

Found his grand-uncle Michael Leszczynski (deputy sheriff) at 5071 Broadyway, Depew, Erie County, NY in the 1940 US Census. He was in ED 15-37, on SHT 6-A (line 4 was Michael and his wife Felicia was on line 5). Click on the link if you have access to Ancestry.com.

Kudos to Ancestry.com for getting their 1940 US Census working in short order. Their Image Viewer is excellent, very fast.

Boleslaw Wlecialowski born(ur.) 6-Nov-1892 – died(zm.) 8-Mar-1961

Stanczyk is killing time until April 2nd and research can begin in earnest on the 1940 US Census.

Wlecialowski, Boleslaw

One of my focus points will be Boleslaw Wlecialowski, my first cousin, twice removed. I have had problems locating him in the US Censuses. So I am hoping 1940 will be different.

Boleslaw, like many Polish-Americans, “Americanized” his name. So Boleslaw became Bill — very alliterative. Of course, if your name is Bill, then your formal name must be William. So we find records for Boleslaw under Boleslaw, Bill or William.

Here is a brief summary of Boleslaw Wlecialowski ‘s  life as I can document it:

Father:	Maciej Wlecialowski (1868 – after 1918)
Mother:	Katarzyna Elijasz    (1863 - after 1918)
Individual Facts
Birth	6 Nov 1892	Kwasów, Swietokrzyskie, Poland
Arrival	6 Jul 1910 (age 17)	Going to uncle Jan Elijasz in 7829 Burke Ave, Cleveland, OH [same addr in August 29th]; New York, New York (on SS Vaderland)
Arrival	29 Aug 1910 (age 17)	from father Maciej Wlecialowski in Pacanow, Stopnica, Kielce, Poland    to uncle Jan Elijasz, 7829 B; New York, New York
Arrival	29 Aug 1910 (age 17)	Line #2Series: T715,   Roll: 1542,     Frame: 328, 327; on USS Vaderland in NYC at Ellis Island
Residence	22 Dec 1913 (age 21)	from brother Leon’s Ship Manifest SS Pretoria arrival of same date; 449 Grady Ave, Detroit, MI
Residence	1915 (about age 23)	from 1915 Detroit City Directory; 67 Playfair, Detroit, MI
Residence	5 Jun 1917 (age 24)	from World War I Draft Registration; 15 Playfair St, Detroit, MI
Arrival	21 Jul 1920 (age 27)	Going to sister Rozalia Gawlik, Detroit, MI.  Returning from WWI (Haller’s Army);
Residence	31 Dec 1924 (age 32)	3121 Nevada St, Detroit, Wayne, MI; From Decl. Of Intent
Residence	14 Jan 1929 (age 36)	3121 Nevada St, Detroit, Wayne, MI; From Nat’l Petition
Residence	1929 (about age 37)	from 1929 Detroit City Directory; 3121 Nevada St, Detroit, Wayne, MI
Death	8 Mar 1961 (age 68)	Macomb County, MI
Burial	11 Mar 1961 (age 68)	Mt Olivet Cemetery

Let me put some of the above into a narrative form.

Boleslaw Wlecialowski was born (ur.) November 6th, 1892 (Gregorian date) in the Russian-Poland partition village of Kwasow in the parish of Pacanow, Poland (gubernia of Kielce). His parents were Maciej Wlecialowski & Katarzyna Elijasz (my great, grand-aunt) — hence Boleslaw is my first cousin, twice removed. I have Boleslaw’s church record (#171 of Pacanow parish 1892 Births) written in Russian (Godparents: Jozef Slawamowski & Marrianna Elijasz).

He arrived at Ellis Island on July 6th, 1910 on the SS Vaderland. He was coming from his father, Maciej Wlecialowski in Pacanow, Stopnica, Kielce, Poland and his destination was his uncle, Jan Elijasz in 7829 Burke Ave, Cleveland, OH  [hence, Stanczyk's interest in the Cuyahoga County/Cleveland OH Elijasz families].

He made his way to Detroit, MI where his older sister Rosalia Wlecialowski Gawlikowski lived. He was living at 449 Grady Ave, Detroit, MI, when his brother Leon arrived at Ellis Island on the SS Pretoria arrival on 22 Dec 1913.

1940 US Census – 9 Days Away — #Genealogy, #Preparation

Stanczyk has finished his preparations for the 1940 US Census (sans index). After the index is finally transcribed, I will query widely for years. But for 2012, I needed to be able to search via the Enumeration District.

As I said before, I made extensive use of Drs:  Steve Morse & Joel Weintraub 1940 Census Tool .

I created a spreadsheet. I listed the most important people I wanted to find in 1940. I used the 1930 US Census and recorded their Enumerated District (ED). This is a necessary precursor to looking up the ED’s for 1940. The only other way is to start from a street address. Now use the link to the 1940 Census Tool [see above] to convert your 1930 EDs to 1940 EDs (or your last known address to 1940 EDs). I made sure that when I got a long list of possible 1940 EDs that I used their ED descriptions and the Google Map to highlight the most likely ED (or EDs) to start with.

I also used the Ancestry.com City Directories (Beta) to finalize my analysis. While doing that I got the idea to pose and hopefully to answer with the 1940 Census some questions. I noticed in a 1941 City Directory that one of my Gawlik/Gawlikowski families started using, Gawlick . In fact due to emails with another genealogist I was prepared to accept Gawlick for this family already.

Well there they were using Gawlick for their family name. There was also another detail in the city directory. It showed that Kath (the wife) was a widow (of Anthony) in 1941. OK, so now I had a boundary for the last possible year for Anthony Gawlick (aka Gawlik) as 1941. I tried to use Ancestry.com’s older city directories and I noticed that they were sparse (not all years) and also when they had a year, it was not always a complete scan of that city directory so my use of Historical City directories was hit or miss for some families and/or streets. But none the less, I was able to find Anthony alive in the 1939 city directory! Ok So now I had a short range: alive in 1939 … to dead in 1941. So maybe the 1940 will tell me is,  ”Anthony alive or dead in 1940″? I added that question to my list of questions.

Questions

Will I find Rose Wlecial Gawlik’s brothers living with her? Why have I had such a hard time locating her borthers (Boleslaw & Leon) in city directories? Is Anthony Gawlick alive or dead? Is my grandmother’s older half-brother Frank Leszczynski still alive in 1940 (he declared his intent to be a US Citizen in 1931)? He’d be about 75 years old in 1940. I wonder what age he use (70 or 75) since I have multiple birth years for him? Also, I learned in my preparations that he used a younger half-brother’s address in 1931. So I wonder is Frank Leszczynski living with Michael Leszczynski in Buffalo/Depew at 257 Broadway in the 1940 Census? Until I had access to historical city directories, I had never realized that Michael and Frank had both lived at the same address — nobody ever mentioned that in any interview or email.

So beyond the facts that the US Census will provide about who is where and how old they are and whether they are US citizens or not, I am hoping to see what the older men were veterans of which US conflicts. The questions related to the Great Depression will also be interesting for all and will certainly be relevant to the political discourse of today — particularly as we march onward to the November elections.

Most of my immigrant Eliasz (aka Elijasz) forebears are deceased before 1940. My grandfather (Joseph) died in 1930 and my grand-uncle (John) died in 1936. So only Mary Eliasz Gronek can be found. Will I get any clues about Detroit Stanley Elyasz (a 1st cousin of my grandfather) and how about Buffalo Stanley Eliasz (is he a cousin or a sibling of my grandfather)?

The suspense and the anticipation is growing. Good thing we had WDYTYA last night and tomorrow night we will get the first episode of Henry Louis Gate’s genealogy show on PBS. Those can help ease the suspense for now until a week from Monday.

How are you preparing? Are you done yet? Are you doing something similar to what I am doing? This is what I am using (email me please) …

Related articles

• Help for the 1940 Census
• The Release of the 1940 US Census
• 1940 US Census - Blank Forms — #Genealogy, #US, #Census
• 1940 US Census Website – #Genealogy, #1940
• Preparing for 1940 Census
• 1940 US Census – 16 days away!

Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper Database App Search Page

Stanczyk,

was finally able to use his training from Steve Morse’s presentation at RootsTech 2012 to create a One-Step Search App for the Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper Database.

To search on 30,920 Polish Vital Record Events, just go to the new Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper Database App Search page (on the right, under PAGES,  for future reference).

FAQ

For more background on the Dziennik Polski Detroit Newspaper click on the link.

You can search on the following fields:

Last Name – exact means the full last name exactly as you typed it. You can also select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters!

First Name - exact means the full first name exactly as you typed it. You can also select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters!

Newspaper Date - exact means that you need to enter the full date. Dates are of the format:

06/01/1924 (for June 1st, 1924). Format is MM/DD/YYYY. Leading zeros are required for a match.

You can use ‘contains’ radio button to enter a partial date. The most useful partial is just to provide the Year (YYYY). Do not use any wild card characters!

Event Type - exact means the full event type. This is not recommended. You SHOULD select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters! Uppercase is not required.

Valid Events Types: BIRTH,  CONSULAR,  DEATH,  or MARRIAGE

Indexer - exact means the full indexer exactly as you typed it. You can also select the ‘starts with’ radio button and just provide the first few starting characters. Do not use any wild card characters!

The Indexer is meant to be informational only, but you could conceivably want to search on this field too, so it is provided.

1940 US Census – 16 Days Away — #Genealogy

Stanczyk apologizes for being away for a few days. I have spent some of that time preparing for the 1940 US Census (sans index).

So I made extensive use of Drs:  Steve Morse & Joel Weintraub 1940 Census Tool .

I created a spreadsheet. I listed the most important people I wanted to find in 1940. I used the 1930 US Census and recorded their Enumerated District (ED). This is a necessary precursor to looking up the ED’s for 1940. The only other way is to start from a street address. Now use the link to the 1940 Census Tool [see above] to convert your 1930 EDs to 1940 EDs (or your last known address to 1940 EDs).

How are you preparing? This is what I used …

Related articles

• Help for the 1940 Census
• The Release of the 1940 US Census
• 1940 US Census - Blank Forms — #Genealogy, #US, #Census
• 1940 US Census Website – #Genealogy, #1940
• Preparing for 1940 Census

Allen County Public Library – Hosts, “March Madness: Genealogy Style” March 18-22

Source: JOAN GRIFFIS - Commercial-News           ( With Additional Notes by Stanczyk) 

— The Genealogy Center @ Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN, will be hosting its annual “March Madness: Genealogy Style” March 18-22 to “jumpstart your research for your ethnic ancestor.”

Allen County Public Library is one of the nation’s finest genealogical resources. The Allen County Public Library –  Genealogy page is here: http://www.genealogycenter.org/ .

 March 18 -“Researching Your Polish Ancestors” will be 1-2 p.m.  The Polish Genealogy event  is  for 

 Researchers interested in their Polish roots are faced with a unique set of challenges, from the language to the infinite spelling variations and the shifting boundaries on the map. This program will explore these challenges, important American sources, both print and online, and research strategies that can shed light on your ancestral town in Poland.

Location: Meeting Room A.

To register for this class. Call 260-421-1225  -or-  Email: Genealogy@ACPL.Info.

For more information, or to view the March Madness brochure.

March 19 – “French-Canadian Research at the Genealogy Center” will be 2-3 p.m.

March 20 – “The Riches of First Nations Heritage: Beginning Native American Genealogical Research” from 2-3 p.m. 

March 21 – Learn about Revolutionary War Service in “It Was Everybody’s War,” from 2-3 p.m.

March 22 – Locate those “Shadowed Roots: Antebellum Era Records for African-American Research,” from 10-11 a.m.

To register or obtain more information, call Melissa Shimkus at (260) 421-1225.

To learn more about the genealogical collection at that prestigious library, visit http://www.genealogycenter.org.

Archiwum Diecezjalne w Kielcach – Pomoc — #Polish, #Genealogy

Stanczyk,

Recently, I asked for help (pomoc) from a genealogy society in Poland (PTG). I asked if anyone in their society (via their forum) could tell me what holdings the, Archiwum Diecezjalne w Kielcach (The Diocessan Archive in Kielce) has for the village of Pacanów.

This is the village of my grandfather, Jozef Elijasz and his parents Jozef Elijasz/Marianna Paluch, and Jozef’s parents: Marcin Elijasz/Anna Zasucha.

I am hoping to visit the Church Archive or to have a Polish genealogist visit the Church Archive in Kielce for me to do some research.

I’ll let my readers know what happens!

Library of Congress – Chronicling America — #Genealogy, #Newspapers

Stanczyk is a Library of Congress (LOC) researcher. Mostly, I have done my research in the Madison building where they keep the Newspapers / Periodicals.

Today they (LOC) sent me an email announcing another 100+ newspapers digitized with another 550,000+ new digitzed pages available via their Chronicling America – Historical Newspaper program. I have written about this worthy program before. Whether you research history or genealogy, these newspapers can be of help and providing evidence or even just adding a context to your ancestors.

Did you know that the LOC has over 220 Polish language newspapers on microfilm (and/or digitized)? To help out the Polish Genealogists, I have  compiled and published a list of the LOC’s Polish Language Newspapers:  here .

Make newspapers a part of your research to fill the gaps or to provide context!

–Stanczyk

Google’s Chrome Browser For Genealogy — #Genealogy, #Technology

     Stanczyk was a big Mozilla/Firefox browser user. On Mac or Windows it did not matter. So it was a shock that I switched to Chrome (Google’s browser).

I did so mostly on Google’s promise that “microdata” would be another widget that would greatly enhance the search experience for genealogy data. I waiting on that feature — still am waiting.

On Tuesday I mentioned Virtual Keyboard 1.45, for entering your diacriticals through your browser into say Ancestry.com. Today, I was reading Kathy Judge Nemaric’s blog – “Dead Reckoning” [nice name for a genealogy blog] and she mentioned an extension to the Chrome Browser. It is called Ancestry Family Search Extension 2.4 .

     Open up a new Tab (Ctrl-T works) and click on Chrome Web Store. In the “Search Store” field, type in “Ancestry Family Search” and press the Enter key to bring up the extension (see on the left).

Click on the Add to Chrome button and then click on the Install button in the dialog box that pops up to confirm your wish. Once you have installed the extensions into your Chrome browser, it will show like the following screen:

Now you are ready to reap the rewards of that hard work. Go to Ancestry.com and perhaps open up your family tree on an individual you are working on. Now your browser’s address bar has a new  ”widget”. Next to the STAR widget you have been using to Bookmark pages is a new widget shaped like a TREE.

See the red circle (and arrow)? Just click on that and it will bring up a new window on top the current TAB in your browser with (in my case) Tomasz Leszczynski result set from the Family Search databases. If you click on one result, then a new TAB will open to the exact record in Family Search.

This is a very nice synergy between the two websites. So I am thinking, that if Google produces their microdata widget, that 2012 will be the year of the widget in Genealogy and perhaps the year of the CHROME browser too.

There is one microdata Schema Explorer browser extension already in the Chrome Web Store. But you will want to wait for Google’s which will use the website: http://historical-data.org/ . I am guessing Google will use this website to develop schemas to guide its browser.

2012 is shaping up to be a very good year for genealogy and to switch to CHROME!

Diacritical Redux – Ancestry GEDCOM — #Genealogy, #Technology

As Stanczyk, was writing about the GEDCOM standard since #RootsTech 2012, I began to pick apart my own GEDCOM file (*.ged). I did this as I was engaged with Tamura Jones (a favorite foil to debate Genealog Technology with). During our tête-á-tête, I noticed that my GEDCOM lacked diacriticals???

What happened? At first I thought it was the software that Tamura had recommended I use, but it was not the problem of that software (PAF). So I looked at the gedcom file that I had imported and the diacriticals were missing from there meaning, my export software was the culprit.

I looked at the GEDCOM’s  HEAD tag and the CHAR sub-tag, and it said “ANSI” [no quotes] was the value. That is not even a valid possible value! According to the GEDCOM 5.5.1 standard [on page 44 of the FamilySearch PDF document]:

CHARACTER_SET:= {Size=1:8}
[ ANSEL |UTF-8 | UNICODE | ASCII ]

Who is this dastardly purveyor of substandard GEDCOM that strips out your diacriticals (that I assumed you have been working so hard to add since my aritcle on Tuesday,  ”Dying For Diacriticals“)? I’ll give you a HINT, it is the #1 Genealogy Website  – Yes,  it is ANCESTRY.COM !

Now what makes this error even more dastardly is that the website shows you the diacriticals in the User Interface (UI), but when you go to export/download the diacriticals are not there in the gedcom and unless you study things closely, you may be oblivious (as Stanczyk was for a long time) that these errors have crept into your research. I also found a spurious NOTE that I cannot find anywhere on anyone in my tree — which gets attributed to my home person (uh, me). This is very alarming to me too !!!

Tim Sullivan (CEO of Ancestry.com), I expected better of you and your website. I entrusted my family tree to you and that is what you did with my gedcom? Now I did some more investigating and I found that Ancestry does not strip ALL diacriticals. My gedcom had diacriticals in the PLAC tags and in NOTE tags. But NOT (I repeat NOT) in the NAME tags.

So Tim [pretend there is a shaky leaf here] , if you or a reputation defender or some other minion skims the Internet (for your name) here is what  I hope You/Ancestry.com will do:

1. Do NOT strip diacriticals from the NAME tag !!!
2.  Fix the Export GEDCOM to create a gedcom file with diacriticals in NAME tags
3. Fix the Export GEDCOM to create a valid CHAR tag value: UNICODE, UTF-8, ASCII, ANSEL. I put them in my prioritized/preferred order [from left-to-right]. I hope you will not use ASCII or ANSEL.
4. Run a GEDCOM validator against the gedcom file your Export GEDCOM software creates to download and fix the other “little things” too  (Mystery NOTEs ???).

Dying For Diacriticals … Beyond ASCII — #HowTo, #Genealogy, #Polish

Stanczyk mused recently upon a few of the NAMEs in my genealogy:

Bębel, Elijasz, Guła, Leszczyński, Kędzierski, Wątroba, Wleciał, Biechów, Pacanów, Żabiec

If you want to write Elijasz (or any of its variants) you are golden. But each of the other names require a diacritic (aka diacritical mark). Early on, I had to drop the diacritics, because I did not have computer software to generate these characters (aka glyphs). So my genealogy research and my family tree were recorded in ASCII characters. For the most part that is not a concern unless you are like John Rys and trying to find all of the possibly ways your Slavic name can be spelled/misspelled/transliterated and eventually recorded in some document and/or database that you will need to search for. Then the import becomes very clear. Also letters with an accent character (aka diacritic) sort differently than  letters without the diacritic mark. For years, I thought Żabiec was not in a particular Gazetteer I use, until I realized there was a dot above the Z and the dotted-Z named villages came after all of the plain Z (no dot) villages and there was Żabiec many pages later! The dot was not recorded in the Ship Manifest, nor in a Declaration of Intent document. So I might not have found the parish so easily that Żabiec belongs to. I hope you are beginning to see the import of recording diacritics in your family tree.

How?

The rest of my article today teaches you how to do this. Mostly we are in a browser, surfing the ‘net, in all its www glory. After my “liberal indoctrination” (aka #RootsTech 2012), I have switched browsers to Google’s Chrome (from Mozilla Firefox) browser. Now I did this to await the promised “microdata” technology that will improve my genealogical search experience.  I am still waiting,  Mr Google !!!   But while I am waiting, I did find a new browser extension that I am rather fond of that solves my diacritical problem: Virtual Keyboard Interface 1.45. I just double-click in a text field and a keyboard pops-up:

Just double-click on a text field, say at Ancestry.com . Notice the virtual keyboard has a drop down (see “Polski“), so I could have picked Русский (for Russian) if I was entering Cyrillic characters into my family tree.

But I want to keep using my browser …            OK!  Now I used to prepare an MS Word document or maybe a Wordpad document with just the diacriticals I need (say Polish, Russian, and Hebrew) then I can cut & paste them from that editor into my browser or computer application as needed — a bit tedious and how did I create those diacritical characters anyway?

I use  Character Map in Windows and Character Palette -or- Keyboard Viewer  on the MAC:

Now if I use one of these Apps, then I can forgo the Wordpad document  ( of special chars. ) altogether and just copy / paste from these to generate my diacritical characters.

What I would like to see from web 2.0 pages and websites is what Logan Kleinwaks did on his WONDERFUL GenealogyIndexer.org website. Give us a keyboard widget like Logan’s, please ! What does a near perfect solution look like …

Logan has thoughtfully provided ENglish, HEbrew, POlish, HUngarian, ROmanian, DEutsche (German),  Slavic, and RUssian characters. Why is it only nearly perfect? Logan, may I please have a SHIFT (CAPITAL) key on the BKSP / ENTER line for uppercase characters? That’s it [I know it is probably a tedious bit of work to this].

Beyond ASCII ?

The title said  beyond Ascii. So is everything we have spoken about. Ascii is a standard that is essentially a typewriter keyboard,  plus the extra keys (ex. Backspace, Enter, Ctrl-F, etc.) that do special things on a computer. So what is beyond Ascii? Hebrew characters (ℵ), Chinese/Japanese  glyphs (串), Cyrillic (Я), Polish slashed-L (Ł), or Dingbats (❦ – Floral Heart). You can now enter of these beyond ascii characters (UNICODE)  in any program with the above suggestions.

Programmer Jargon – others  proceed with caution …

The above are all UNICODE character sets.  UTF-8 can encode all of the UNICODE characters (1.1 Million so far) in nice and easy 8bit bytes (called octets — this is why UTF-8 is not concerned with big/little endianess). In fact, UTF-8‘s first 128 characters is an exact 1:1 mapping of ASCII making ascii a valid UNICODE characters set. In fact, more than half of all web pages out on the WWW (‘Net) are encoded with UTF-8. Makes sense that our gedcom files are too! In fact UTF-8 can have that byte-order-mark (BOM) at the front of our gedcom or not and it is still UTF-8. In fact the UTF-8 standard prefers there be no byte order mark [see Chapter 2 of UNICODE] at the beginning of a file. So please FamilySearch remove the BOM from the GEDCOM standard.

If FamilySearch properly defines the newline character in the gedcom grammar [see Chapter 5, specifically 5.8 of UNICODE] then there is nothing in the HEAD tag that would be unreadable to a program written in say Java (which is UTF-16 capable to represent any character U+0000 to U+FFFF) unless there is an invalid character which then makes the gedcom invalid. Every character in the HEAD tag is actually defined within 8bit ascii which can be read by UTF-8 and since UTF-8 can read all UNICODE encodings you could use any computer language that is at least UTF-8  compliant to read/parse the HEAD tag (which has the CHAR tag and its value that defines the character set). Everything in the HEAD tag, with the exception of the BOM is within the 8bit  ascii character set. Using UTF-8 as a default encoding to read the HEAD will work even if there is a BOM.

#PA #Genealogy – Access To Vital Statistics — Public Access, Privacy Law, PA Act 110, SB 361

PA Act 110 – Public Records (formerly known as Senate Bill 361)

This bill amends the Act of June 29, 1953 (P.L. 304, No. 66), known as the Vital Statistics Law of 1953, to provide for public access to certain birth and death certificates after a fixed amount of time has passed. This legislation provides that such documents become public records 105 years after the date of birth or 50 years after the date of death.

This is a mixed bag, but at least its consistent. I wish it was 72 years  (like the census) instead of 105. Also the 50 years after death is way too long. Dead is dead. Maybe you could make a case for 5-10 years. By doing greater than 30-35 years you are forcing genealogy research to skip generations since the current generation would die before gaining access. Genealogists will have to will research plans to children in PA.

The indexes (I hate the word indices) are here: Birth Index (1906 — so far that’s it) | Death Index (1906-1961).   By the way, you will need the American Soundex of the last name as this is how the records are sorted:  American Soundex of Surname, followed by alphabetical on FirstName. Use Steve Morse’s Soundex One-Step page.

London, England – WDYTYA — #Polish, #Genealogy, #TV,#Show

At the London “Who Do YOU Think You Are?“, the largest genealogy event in the English-speaking world will be held this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in London, England @ a three-day expo at the Olympia Exhibition Hall (February 24-26, 2012).

Between February 24 and 26 the Kresy-Siberia Foundation will have a stand at the “Who Do You Think You Are?” — the world’s biggest family history show.

Tens of thousands of Poles imprisoned in Russian labour camps or “gulags” across the far reaches of Siberia between 1940 and 1941 were freed in 1941, when Russia decided to become an ally of Great Britain in 1941 the prisoners were freed to form the Polish Second Corps — who fought so heroically in North Africa and the Italian campaign of 1943-44, (i.e. battle of Monte Cassino).

Many of these men settled in and adopted as their home, the communities in Bath, Trowbridge and Bristol. Perhaps this event will lead to new connections between these displaced families and their ancestors/descendants in other parts of the world.

Stanczyk wishes to note that the Polish Second Corps included: Wojtek soldier bear – mascot of 22nd Artillery Supply Company, who I have written about a few times.

 

http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Chance-Polish-descendants-trace-roots/story-15298065-detail/story.html

 

Meme: #RootsTech — #Genealogy, #Technology

A while ago, Stanczyk bemoaned iOS5. Therefore, I owe it an update …

• Portable Genealogy is sound – Ancestry App better than ever
• The Camera App in iOS5 does have a zoom. In fact if you use the familiar “pinch-gesture” you can zoom in/out and the old zoom slider appears too. Also you can use the Volume Up button (on the side of the phone to take a picture — helpful when the camera is rotated.
• Just having the iPhone was very useful during the #RootsTech conference as my note taking device. Until iPad2(3) arrived(s) and it has both WiFi/G3 (LTE) I would have been without blogging capabilities in the Salt Palace convention center when its WiFi would go down. I utilized the #RootsTech App (for iPhone & there was one for Android too).
• In the library it was my digital  camera.
• In fact the ImageToText App came in handy to OCR an image of text for me
• I used the Ancestry App to enter the transcribed text from the microfilm images right into the evidence (note area) of the app of an indivividual and attached the iPhone picture too.
• In one case, I was able to get an immediate shaky leaf as a result of my data entry — much to my disbelief (and it was correct). So I could do an immediate on-site analysis and do further microfilm searching as a result.
• I used the Bump App to swap contact info with one genealogist. I cannot wait until all genealogists become mobile-enabled and lose my business cards altogether. Hint to RootsTech Vendors you should use Bumps too to collect user info. Why do I have to drop a business card into a fishbowl??? Do a BUMP,  get a chotsky (swag). Leave the fishbowl for  the Luddites.
• Are you a Slavic (Czech, Pole, Russian, etc.) genealogist? Then you must be dying for diacriticals. You could add an international keyboard. But why? In iOS5, just press and hold down the ‘ l ‘ key and up will come a list including the slashed-l. Just slide your finger over onto the slashed-l to enter that. Likewise, for entering ‘S, E, A, Z, C, N, etc.’ too — works upper/lower case. Of course if you have German ancestors, you can get your umlauts too in the same fashion. That trick is a Latin Alphabet data entry trick (sorry Cyrillic or Hebrew readers — try the International Keyboard trick).

1940 US Census – Blank Forms — #Genealogy, #US, #Census

Legacy Family Tree has release blank US Census Forms (page1 | page2) for the 1940 US Census. April 2nd is coming, are you prepared? Is Ancestry.com prepared?

At #RootsTech 2012, the 3rd keynote was an Ancestry talking-head panel. They joked about whether the website could withstand the crush on April 2nd. Let’s see how this experiment goes.

This is the first US Census to be released in an all digital format.

 

Genealogical Finds From #RootsTech (Family History Library)

Stanczyk was in Salt Lake City, UT for RootsTech a week and a half ago. I thoroughly enjoyed the intersection of my two intellectual pursuits: technology & genealogy. I was not the only person at RootsTech who said they had a foot in each world. I think the conference planners think this is a mash-up between users & developers; And it definitely is that. But there are a large number of us tech savants, who are also avid  genealogists.

Success 1

In an earlier article  (7-Feb-2012), I wrote about an exciting find of two of my great-grandmother’s siblings marrying each other (a Major & a Paluch). Because it was not an Elijasz nor a Leszczynski record and yet I found it because of an Social Network Analysis experiment I conducted last year, I investigated that record and made an outstanding find.

Today I wanted to talk about a cousin of mine from TN whose grandmother turned out to be a cousin of my grandfather. My cousin Kim showed me her grandparent’s marriage records (both civil & church) and we discovered that her great-grandmother was my great-grand-aunt. We also saw that her grandfather (Adam Gawlikowski) was from Opatowiec in the Polish Church Record (Sweetest Heart of Mary Church in Detroit). Well there were a couple of Opatowiec — so I took the opportunity of being in Salt Lake to narrow down which parish might be the correct one.

Success 2

1st part of Rec #27 - Antoni Gawlik

I found my cousin Kim’s great-grandparent’s having children in Opatowiec (in the Kazimierz Wielka powiat, old woj. Kielce — LDS MF# 1192351 & 1807620). In fact, I found her great-granduncle Antoni Gawlikowski ‘s birth record with the correct parents: Martin Gawlik & Maryanna Lisowskich. In fact, if Kim is reading my blog, you should rent LDS MF # 1192350 and you may be able find your great-grandparents’ marriage record and many other Gawliks/Lisowskich, potentially all the way back to 1614 !     MF# 1192351 & 1807620 were in Russian, but I am betting that almost all of MF # 1192350 (1614-1870) will be in Latin.   Sadly, it appears her grandfather Adam was born after the end of the last year in MF 1807620. But I did find three siblings of Adam (besides Antoni) that we did not know of  before:  Jan Gawlik,  Ludwik Gawlik, and Maryanna Gawlik. I also saw that the Gawlik name was written without the ‘ski’ at the end. Sadly both Ludwik and Maryanna died in 1880. Perhaps Jan survived into adulthood. He may have stayed in Poland and took care of his parents. I am sorry that Antoni’s birth record fell across two pages in the church book, requiring two camera shots.

2nd part of record #27 - Antoni Gawlik

Meme: Church Metrical Books … Embellishments, Oddities, & Notations #3

Last week Stanczyk was combing through the LDS Library in Salt Lake. I was perusing the Tumlin parish (LDS Microfilm # 939955). Whilst I was in 1763 covering the Death Records, I found my current Embellishment (or is it an Oddity).

Embellishment

Now in the older Latin records, the Latin paragraph and not the Latin Box Format, it is not uncommon to see the local priest embellish the new year. They usually write the number and perhaps adorn it with some dots around the digits or some small doo-dad or dingbat (in modern parlance).

But clearly in 1763 this priest had a lot of free time and the Creative Spirit overcame him.

Notice the two skull & crossbones. Each is surrounded by floral designs. This seems to this jester to be some kind of All Souls Day motivation whereby the cemeteries are adorned with flowers and the deceased are celebrated.

I have to wonder do other European countries have such Embellishments in their church books too or is this a uniquely Slavic predilection?